Freedom

Freedom

A while ago I did a list of values that I live by and highest on that list was freedom and reviewing that this new year I don’t think it’s changed, but then the question is how one sees freedom. Unlike some I do not search for it outwardly, but rather I search for it in my own mind. Why not? Victor Frankl, paid testament to this in the concentration camps of the Third Reich. And in this view I find what Bodhidharma points to very interesting. Here are few snippets from the Blood Stream Sermon.

“Beyond this mind you’ll never see another Buddha… Whoever sees his nature is a Buddha… And the Buddha is the person who’s free… At every moment, where language can’t go, that’s your mind… If you seek direct understanding, don’t hold on to any appearance whatsoever, and you’ll succeed… And this nature is the mind and this mind is the buddha.”

Another thought that sticks with me on this topic is the universe in which we live. While Einstein may have demonstrated that spatially it’s finite, yet continuing to expand, Stephen Hawkings finding, at least as I understand it is that temporally it’s both finite and infinite. This blows my mind in the same way the Diamond Sutra did in my mid twenties. To me Einstein’s view that energy is indestructible amounts to much the same thought, just from another point of view. What meaning does becoming have in such a context? Truly everything is just so. There is no start, yet there is a start. Perhaps we are just like that.

“Like a meteor, like darkness, as a flickering lamp,
An illusion, like hoar-frost, or a bubble,
Like clouds, a flash of lightening, or a dream;
So is all conditioned existence to be seen.”

“One should use one’s mind in such a way that it will be free from attachment.” – The Diamond Sutra.